What is War?
by TimeTheFinalFrontier
Summary: When a Nation goes to war against itself, they forget everything they've ever been and everyone they've ever loved.
1. Chapter 1

)(Chapter I)(

America had been around forever. He hadn't had a name, when he began, or words to express his state of being, only a basic knowledge of his existence, of the land and the creatures living on it – not human, not yet; they'd come later. He'd known of a place North, even though he didn't have words for North, because some of his creatures had been there and because some of the creatures from the North had come to him. He liked the North, and felt something akin to love for it. Sometimes, in small bursts of intelligence that gave him knowledge that extended to a world beyond his existence and that of his creatures and that of the North, he wondered if the North knew of him, and if it had an existence of its own. He decided that, yes, the North knew him as well as he knew it and wondered the same things before his focus narrowed back to the land and the cold at its fringes.

Then humans came and he became so much more than just a state of being – now he had knowledge that he was one place of many on a turning world that spun around a star very far away. He could sense the others as he had once sensed the North, and now the North was very clear in his mind; their creatures were the same, their people were the same, their lands were a gradient of mountains and plains and warm to cold and rain to snow and ice. He thought to the North and the North thought back, and he was overjoyed to find that the North had thought of him as he had thought of it, back in the days before humans and words and knowledge.

The moon went around the Earth nine times, and suddenly there were more humans that hadn't come from a bridge that went somewhere like the North but colder and east of here. They were tiny humans that cried and wailed and needed to be taken care of. There had been tiny humans before now – some of the people had carried them to him and the North in their bellies, but these small people were _his_, his and the North's.

Then one of the children died, and he couldn't tell if it was his or the North's – it was theirs, he decided, since they were one and the same – and he cried, and so did the North. Winter came early that year, and more of the children died. He and the North stopped crying – they'd grown used to the cycle of life. Spring came, and summer followed. Crops were harvested and the small humans that had lived grew a bit bigger and took their first steps.

By the time the cold had trickled down from the North and into his fertile plains, something had changed. The moon went around once before he realized that he was one of those sparks of life made when a man and a woman coupled together. He reached out to the North, and the North reached back, but it took them another cycle of the moon before they realized that they were closer than they ever had been before. They were alive now, more than just a collection of creatures and words and knowledge. They were more than just land. They were human.

)()(

The moon was full seven more times before they were born. The creature that wasn't yet America could see the North for the first time, and in his mind, he could see how the North saw him and hear the North's thoughts. The North called him the South, and that was as good a name as any, so he decided to keep it.

They could see the humans around them looking on worriedly, brows furrowed and mouths turned downward. The South tried to tell them not to worry, but he found that his mouth didn't work properly and it came out as a tiny squawk. The crowd breathed a tiny sigh at that and turned their attention to the North, who reached with clumsy limbs towards him as he was lifted up and taken away. He realized that the humans wanted them to cry, as that was what their children did when they were new, and the North came to the same revelation, hearing his thoughts, and started to cry in a weak voice. The humans smiled and set him back down next to his southern half.

They reached out until their hands touched, one entity united once more. The North was cold, as the South had always expected him to be. They smiled at each other, feeling their lands and the other's lands as they never had before. The continent was theirs, and they were the continent, they were alive and so was their land.

Autumn came and went as winter took its place, and the North grew strong and became able to turn himself and the South around so that they were the way they were supposed to be, the North with his back to his lands and holding the South. The South grew stronger slowly, just like all the other human children. By the end of the winter, the North was speaking to him whenever they were alone in a voice only slightly mangled by his tiny mouth. The South was still silent and weak, like the other children, but they both knew that spring was coming and that this was soon to change.

Then Spring came and the South said his first word as the other children his age were getting around to saying their second, but by the end of the week, he could speak almost as well as the North. They also started walking, together, as the North had promised him; the other children had taken their first steps months ago, but neither saw the need. Crawling let them be so much closer to the land, to feel it with their hands and knees and whole body. Now, as they started walking together, they did it perfectly; the South had thought to him that they were human when they first discovered their new forms, but the North knew that they were so much more.

The humans were scared, they could tell. They looked at the two warily and spoke behind their hands as if they wouldn't be heard – they knew everything there was to know, heard everything that was said, saw everything from coast to coast, from the frozen, icy islands of the furthest North to the place where the South narrowed to give way to another continent.

Summer came, and the North and the South grew to be as large as the children that had been carried across the bridge in little satchels tied onto backs. They pondered telling the people who they were so that they'd not worry or cast their eyes away whenever they came across the two children with the too-bright, too-large eyes, but decided that if their people truly wanted to know, they would feel the presence of their land just as their land had felt them in the days before they'd had bodies.

Years passed, and the children that had been born of their land grew up and had children of their own, and the people that had once been young and vital grew old and died. Soon there was no one left who remembered the day the North and the South had been born save for them, but the people accepted their presence without fear and without judgment for the very first time. They'd heard the legends about the two boys who were older than anyone alive, and they knew they were Gods.

Most of the time, the North and the South sat at the edge of the settlement in which they'd been born, leaning against each other mountain-range-to-mountain-range, warm to cold, plain to plain. A whole season came and went in this way, until the rains came with the arrival of yet another spring and they decided to go to the shore.

They moved slowly as they gathered their things, as they'd discovered with time that age made people move in such ways and after all, they were the oldest people alive. They didn't own as much as one would expect a deity to own, as they provided for each other and the land gave them everything else they could think to need, so it took them only an hour or two despite their slow pace.

They decided to leave at night without telling anyone where they'd gone, as Gods did such things often, or so the legends said. There wasn't anyone here who loved them anyway – not anymore, at least. They'd never be back, they knew, and this was a profound thought for two beings that had once been everything, but in a way, they'd always be here because they were the land, and the land was them.

Darkness fell and with the last of the fading light, the North and the South were gone from their birthplace, never to return.

* * *

**A/N: 'North' refers to Canada and 'South' refers to America. This chapter takes place about 17,000 years ago. **

**Disclaimer: I do not and will never own Hetalia. **


	2. Chapter 2

)(Chapter II)(

The North and the South decided that they loved each other for the first time somewhere on the journey through the Rocky Mountains. They'd always known, they assured each other. But they hadn't been human then, or 'more than human,' as the North keep reminding his Southern counterpart.

"I don't want to be more than human," the South confessed one day.

"But, South, you've never been human. Neither of us has," the North said in his too-quiet voice.

_Stop talking like that,_ the South had once told him. _You're the True North, the strongest land in all the world, and I wish you'd start speaking like it. Don't make me have to be loud enough for the both of us._

"It's just that I thought that when we were born... That'd be it. We'd have a normal life, thirty, forty springs at best, and then we'd go back to just existing. I thought that if we were going to become human, we'd at least do it the right way."

"Well, if we weren't more than human, we wouldn't be able to do this," the North said, taking the South's hand in his own. "We would be able to walk with our lands pressed together, and we wouldn't be able to smell the air or taste the food. We'd just see and hear and feel. And we wouldn't have each other. Not like this."

"We would have had each other for as long as a human lives."

"But this way, we can have this forever," the North whispered.

The South was silent and the North wondered if he'd heard him.

"I can always hear you," the South said testily.

The North smiled sheepishly. "I know."

)()(

It took them the entire summer and most of the fall to reach the coast. They were deep in the North's lands, and it was already colder than it got in the deepest of the South's winters.

"I'll freeze up here," the South whined as they arrived near enough to the coast to be able to smell the salt air and hear the crashing waves in the still of the night and began to move north. They'd still hadn't seen the sea, and the South was convinced that by the time they reached it, it would be frozen over so far out that they'd be able to walk to another country.

The North just laughed and pulled them along, and after their third sunrise near the sea, they stopped walking and began to run.

"Come on," the North called over his shoulder, pulling the South along.

"Hey, wait up," the South panted, trying to run faster through the tall weeds. The sun was still hovering on the horizon, as if it hadn't decided whether or not it wanted to rise higher in the sky for another day or go lie back down below the ground.

When they skidded to a halt, it was on the edge of a cliff that the South would have fallen over if the North hadn't caught him and pulled him back. "Next time, give a little warning, will you? I barely had enough time to stop!"

"Shh," said the North, pointing due east. "Look."

The South freed himself from the other's protective grip and followed the line of his finger towards the place where the bottom of the blood-red morning sun was just emerging from the sea. "So that's where she lives," he marveled.

The North hummed in response and took a tentative step forward to peer over the edge of the cliff they were standing upon. About a hundred feet below, feral white waves lapped at sharp black points jutting out of the ground. He shivered. This was the highest point for miles around; the cliff dissolved into a gentle, rolling slope a few hundred paces back, and beyond the hills laid the beach. He could see strips of it from here, pure and untouched. "It's beautiful," he finally said.

"You mean you're beautiful," the South laughed. "This place is far too cold to be me."

"Perhaps. We never could decide where you end and I begin."

"Probably in the place where the rivers freeze before the trees are bare of their leaves," the South said, rubbing his arms to try to regain some feeling in them.

"You're cold," the North said, looking at the other as if for the first time.

"I've been saying that for _days._ And here I was, thinking you're the smart one."

The North smiled shyly at that. "Let's go south. It's not wise to spend the winter without a tribe."

"Ah, there's the North I know."

And so the North and the South set off once more, with the winter chasing them along the shore, over hills and through forests until they reached the place that would see them through the season.

"This place feels important," the North said as they watched their new tribe go about the business of welcoming their visitors, small frown marring on his face.

The South squinted at him. "Nah. I've known this place since the beginning of time. Nothing special about it."

"Not yet, no," the North sighed.

The South glared at him for a moment or two before stalking off. The North sighed again, and sat down on a rock. They'd never been apart for more than a few minutes; the South would be back soon enough. But when he'd still not returned in the time it took for the sun to go from grazing the uppermost leaves of the trees to becoming stuck in their branches, the North knew something was wrong.

)()(

The North found the South in the forest bordering the edge of their new tribe's settlement, playing with an eagle. There was a white bear that he recognized as his own sitting on the ground next to the South, and the North could tell that he'd come from the top of the world.

"He says he's for you," the South told the North. "The eagle is mine, though."

"H-hello," the North said softly, kneeling next to the white bear. "What are you doing here, eh?"

"Who are you?" The bear asked.

"I'm the North, and it's rude of you to ask a question before you've answered mine."

"Question?"

"Yes. I asked what you're doing here."

"Oh. I'm here for you."

"Told you so," the South said.

The North bit his lip and crawled over to the South, stroking the top of his eagle's head. "And what are you doing here, eh?" He asked the eagle.

No answer was forthcoming and the South laughed. "He doesn't talk, silly."

"Well, my animal talks. Why shouldn't yours?"

"Things don't work that way?"

The North smiled fondly at the South and then remembered why he'd come. "What took you so long? Why did you leave in the first place?"

The South looked away. "I don't like when you talk about the future."

The North nodded. "Then I won't, anymore."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"We should probably go back," the South started.

"The others..." The North began.

"Are probably starting to worry."

"Yeah, we should..."

"Go back," the South finished.

The white bear from the top of the world and the South's beautiful eagle followed them back into the village. Legends were born, and with them, came the first snow of the winter.

)()(

A thousand years passed. The North got better at hiding his thoughts from the South, and the South stopped wishing to be a normal human. Another thousand springs, summers, and winters passed between them in a place where autumn happened within the space of an hour and they decided to go to the other sea, the one where the waters were warmer and the first of their people had long ago fished in. They came, and went back to the heartland of the South, before one of them got the idea to travel to the place where the North had once dissolved into the land east of here.

The people they'd been born to had told them about the east, about their home far, far away. No one remembered what it was like anymore, except for the North and the South, so it was only fair that they'd be the first people borne of the continent to see it.

The place was further North than either of them had ever gone, and the South let the North take the lead as he felt foreign land under his feet for the first time.

"North?"

"Hmm?"

"I can't feel it anymore. My lands... It's all you."

"Here," the North said, taking off his mittens and instructing the South to do the same. He took the other's hands in his own. "I can feel enough for the both of us. Is this better?"

The South nodded.

"We're almost there," the North said. "Only a day or two more, and we'll be somewhere that isn't us."

"I'm scared," the South said in a small voice.

The North smiled. "So am I."

)()(

The reached the sea at noon the following day. The South laughed. "Isn't it impossible for us to get lost?"

"This is the right place," the North said slowly.

"I _remember_ how it happened, North. They walked. They didn't swim. It would have been too cold!"

"I know."

"So... Either this isn't the right place, or..."

"Or what?"

"Well, I don't really know. It can't be the right place."

"But it is!" The North insisted. "The bridge was here, thousands of years ago... It's... It's gone."

The South laughed again. "Land doesn't just disappear, North. We're obviously lost."

"Oceans," said a high voice from behind them. They turned to see the white bear.

"Eh?"

"The oceans. They rose." The bear walked into the water and the North sighed.

"They rose," he mocked.

"Hey, North?"

"What is it?"

"Remember when we went to that cliff a _really_ long time ago?"

"Of course. I don't forget anything and neither do you, so why are you even asking?"

"Well, it was _really_ cold there. And... I'm not cold right now."

"Good for you," the North said angrily.

"This is further north and it's not as cold. Now, I know you're the smart one and that you got an immortal talking bear and all I get is a new eagle every year... But I _think_ the world is warming."

"That's ridiculous."

"We're thousands of years old and you own a talking bear that's at least two thousand. Now you understand why I wanted a _normal_ life. Normal humans never notice the world warming and they don't own talking bears-"

"Hey, I like him! He's cute!"

"Whatever. Anyway, the point is that a human would look at this place and think it's always been like this and go back home."

"We _could_ do the same."

"We could," South said, beaming.

"I'm sure we'll see the east some day. Even if it does take a few thousand years."

"Hmm... What do you think the future will be like?" The South asked.

The North laughed. "You? Asking about the future? Well... I think it'll be sorta like this."

"Boring!"

"Hey, let me finish! But we'll find faster animals so we can travel from here to the calm sea and all the way to the other sea in just a few days."

"Wow," said the South.

"Hm. And! We'll find rocks that will make sharper tools and we'll find better things to make homes with and one day, we'll even live underground or in the sky!"

"You've lost your mind," the South said teasingly.

"You're the one who wanted excitement."

"I guess so, yeah," he said, leaning against the North. "Let's start going back as soon as your bear returns. I miss my land."

"I do too."

"You can't feel it anymore?"

"Not up here, no. Just back there," he said, pointing to a rock they'd passed a few minutes before they'd arrived, "was the last place."

The South looked up at him. "So, you mean..."

The North nodded. "This is as human as we'll ever be."

"We could always come back," the South offered.

"The world is warming. And this... This is low tide. No telling if this place will be here even tomorrow."

They stayed until the tide chased them back. The South still couldn't feel his lands, but the North assured him he could feel them both. The place where they'd been human was gone, and he couldn't help but mourn its passing as the North's bear came out of the water and shook itself off. There wasn't anyplace left in the world where they could be anything but the sum of their people, and there wouldn't be ever again, at least not until the invading ocean managed to fit itself back into the seas it had come from.

As they left the place where they'd met humanity, winter came without snow, and the South began to understand for the first time that the world was changing.

* * *

**Historical Notes: The 'warming world' referenced in this chapter refers not to global warming, but to the end of the last ice age/ period of glaciation. Assume that the last event in this chapter takes place around 10,000 years ago, when ice sheets over large parts of the continent began to melt and when the Bering Land Bridge became submerged under the ocean. **


	3. Chapter 3

)(Chapter III)(

The year was 1032 when the people who came from places like _Iceland_ and _Norway_ landed on the shores not far from the cliff the North and the South had visited thousands of years ago.

It wasn't 1032 for them – they didn't keep track of the years, not like that, not yet. There were seasons and years that were usually counted in springs or in harvests, there were sunrises and sunsets and there was the time it took the moon to go from one place in the sky, all the way around and back again.

There had been people in Vinland – that's what they were calling it, Vinland, as if it weren't _the North_ like it had always been – but they'd come and gone, and the last people had left two hundred years ago. The North and the South were glad that there weren't people now, because the strange people with their harsh language had stains on their clothes that looked like blood and carried around long, sharp weapons that were also similarly discolored.

There were two people that were like them – not quite human, as the North had taken to putting it, and the South had never hated any variation of that phrase that he'd always known to mean 'not human,' as in, completely, utterly, not human in a way that will never be anything like human, quite so much. They looked similar, but not as much as the North and the South did, and they were older, as well. They looked to be just about the age that the human boys would begin to accompany the men on their hunting trips, trailing behind and watching from a distance, knowing that their turn would come in another summer or two. The North and the South could tell, though, that the two foreigners were far older than they looked. The one from Norway had been human for almost as long as the North and the South – ten thousand years, only two or three thousand less than the North and South. The one from Iceland had been human for only three hundred years, but they'd both seen and done much more than the North and the South. They'd been places, and they'd done terrible things to the people they'd found there.

The foreign not-quite-humans debated whether or not to kill them, but the one called Norge talked his companion out of it. The humans – they were called Vikings – built a settlement in the North while the two native lands watched from a distance. After a while the Vikings and Norway and Iceland came and left, returning to something called war; their work here was done – they'd came, they'd seen, and there hadn't been anyone to conquer.

* * *

**Historical note: To my knowledge, neither Iceland or Norway was involved in any wars during the year 1032. However, Norway fought the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and you can pretend that it had lasting consequences that needed to be attended to in the following few years. **_  
_


	4. Chapter 4

)(Chapter IV)(

In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

The year was 1492 to the part of the world that thought itself to be more important than anywhere else. In the fall, a man arrived on an island off the coast of the South. The North and the South thought nothing of it, and life continued for them as it always had.

The world – or, rather, the part of the world that liked to think it owned all the other parts – found out about the island the following year.

In 1507, the Important Place named them America. The North and the South discovered that they were both North, as there was a place south of the South that was called South America. They were to be called North America, or so it seemed. Word traveled from the island off the coast of the South up to the North and they slowly learned about the place that had deemed them worthy of exploration. The Importance Place had begun the process of conquering the world, dividing the places they'd decided to exploit through something called war – they'd heard that word before, and they were starting to fear it – and then left after everything was sold off and partitioned and sufficiently conquered. America – or the New World, as they were sometimes called, a name that the South secretly adored – was next.

)()(

People arrived in the North from a country called France in the year 1534. France himself was there, a feral grin plastered on his face and a crazed look in his eyes. Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay, and Louisiana were named and marked off on pieces of parchment paper.

The North had cried when he'd heard their new names. "They're all awful," he'd sobbed.

"Well, is there any you like best?" The South asked, trying to be helpful.

"C-Canada, maybe, but they're all terrible! Canada's just the best of them."

"Hm.. Canada... It's not too bad. I liked Acadia best, but Canada is cool too."

The North just cried harder at this.

"Hey," the South said. "Stop that. You'll always be my North."

But the world was still changing. A few months passed, and France the man left – 'war' again. New France didn't leave with him; it was here to stay.

A century passed from the time America had become their name, and 1606 came and went. Spring arrived in the year 1607, and with it, another ship from a far-away land.

For the first time, the South got to feeling that the Important Place across the ocean – Europe, he'd learned – had declared 'war' on him and the North.

"What is war, North?" The South asked one day.

"I don't think you want to know," the North said, climbing on top of his white bear. "I know I don't," he said under his breath.

"What was that?" The South asked brightly in a voice that was far too loud for how close he was standing.

The North stared at his other half for a long moment before telling his white bear to take him to the shore. The future was arriving, and it was time to stop running.

* * *

**Historical Note: France was vaguely involved in the Ottoman–Safavid War from 1532 to 1555.**


	5. Chapter 5

)(Chapter V)(

The North had always been able to see the future. He'd been around forever – long before the South, long before anyone, perhaps. Existence had started at the top of the world, the place where he'd cross paths with one day. The top of the world was magic, and knew what places would one day enter its circle. It knew the future, and because it did, so did he.

He'd known this day was coming – he could see forever, after all – but he'd never thought it would be this soon. That's the thing about forever; it always happens all at once.

He'd known also that, one day, the South would become the strongest land in the world for a brief time and burn itself out. He would rise in its place, because that seemed to be his place: the successor of the South, the heir to the throne of their once combined lands. But that didn't matter. He never wanted to lose the South, especially not to the thing called war. And this... This was the beginning of the end, he could tell.

He'd always told himself that the South and him would remain in this life until the end of time, that the South would remain 'weak' for hundreds of thousands of years to come, and that that would be their version of a normal human life; they'd grow up, weak as children were, and then climb their way to the top as adults did as they became elders, and then hold power for a short time before moving on to their equivalent of the Land Beyond, as elders were wont to do.

But it seemed that what had been scheduled for the end of time was happening now, on the shores of their land, as he watched, helpless to stop it.


	6. Chapter 6

)(Chapter VI)(

The humans unloading their ship didn't notice the North or his polar bear as the boy snuck towards two men having a loud argument on a pier that hadn't been there before.

"Go back to France, frog," the one with an accent he'd never heard before shouted.

"This is _mine,_" the one he recognized as France yelled in return.

"No, what's yours is up here and over there," the strange man said, gesturing wildly to a familiar piece of parchment paper. "I only want what's by the shore!"

"Then you can have exactly that. The coast is drawn for you, I'll make it a different color if you'd like," France snorted.

"From here to here," the map began to wave wildly once more and France flinched. "I'm not taking what's yours. Just everything that's _not._"

"Fine, have your worthless strip of land! _See_ if I care!" France exclaimed, hands flying up in defeat as he turned to storm away. He froze when he saw the bear, and leapt behind the strange man, or tried to – he ended up falling over the edge of the pier and into the ocean.

The North laughed a little and slid off of his bear. The strange man stopped scowling at a drenched France as he tried to scramble out of the sea for long enough to turn to him and frown. "G-get away from that bear, lad," the strange man said shakily. "Slowly, now, come along."

The North giggled. "It's all right. He's very friendly."

France fell back into the ocean and stranger scowled harder. "Bears make horrible pets," he called from somewhere below.

"What would you know, frog?" The stranger shouted before turning back to the North. "I'm not sure how long you've had him, but he's dangerous, lad, and you should move away."

"I've had him for ten thousand years."

The stranger took a slow step back and tripped on France's fingers, sending them both down into the waters below.

"I'm never going to be dry again, L'Angleterre," France started to rant. "_Never_. Oh, my beautiful hair, and my clothes... _Ruined._ This had better be worth it."

The man – L'Angleterre, according to France – hauled himself onto the pier and started to hold out his hand to France but thought better of it. "He's one of us."

France let go of the pier in surprise and tumbled back into the sea. "That is _it,_" he shouted. "No one say a word until I am back on dry land again! Not one word!"

"Oh, shut up and climb," the stranger grumbled.

France finally crawled onto the pier and flopped on his back, panting dramatically. "Je suis mort," he cried. {I am dead.}

"Unlike the corpse over there, I am England," the stranger introduced himself.

"I'm..." He thought for a moment. "Canada."

"I feel like falling back into the ocean!" France said, covering his face with his hands.

"That can be arranged," England said curtly, pushing France off the edge once more.

France started crying below them. "I am nothing but kind to you, mon cher, and this is what I get in return! I give up! Tell the others I drowned myself!"

"As if they'd care!" England scoffed. "Canada," he said in a calmer voice, "is there someone who represents this land?" He started to wave his map around and Canada knew that he was talking about the South.

"No," he lied.

"Is it the bear?" England asked, one huge eyebrow making the momentous effort of lifting itself in question.

"No. He's just a bear."

"I thought you said he was ten-thousand years old?"

"He is."

"And I talk, too," the bear said proudly.

England's other eyebrow joined the other in its exertion. "Now _I_ feel like falling into the ocean."

"That can be arranged, mon ami," a French voice said below them, and suddenly England was gone with a _splash._

Canada frowned deeply as they struggled in the icy waters below. He was reluctant to leave in case they decided to drown each other, but he decided that he wouldn't mind all that much if they did, so he climbed back onto his bear and went off in search of the South.

)()(

"I didn't tell them about you," the North said when he finally found the South petting this year's eagle.

"We haven't had visitors since forever," the South whined.

"You can't let them find you, South. They'll..." He paused for a long moment before deciding what to say. "They'll teach you the meaning of war."

"Does this mean I have to... Leave you?" The South asked in a whisper.

The North hesitated for a long moment before answering. They'd been together for thousands of years, thousands upon thousands of years in which they'd never been apart for more than an hour, thousands and thousands of years in which they'd always fallen asleep together, in each other's arms, holding hands, their lands melding into each other. "Go west. Be careful in the places France has claimed, and don't go too far south. I heard the others talking about a 'Spain' in the south. And... Be careful."

"Come with me."

"I don't think I can. England and France will want me to stay."

The South nodded. "I'll leave tomorrow."

The North felt his heart sink. He hadn't expected his warmer half to give up so easily. The South had never been one to run away. "So, one last night," he said quietly, trying to pretend his heart wasn't breaking.

"Looks like," the South said evenly, and the North glared at him just as he had earlier. He wanted to run again, but the South was leaving tomorrow and he'd never forgive himself if he missed what seemed like their last ever hours together.

)()(

When they went to bed that night, the North turned away from the South to try to hide his tears. They stayed back-to-back for a while before the South turned over and wrapped his arms around the North. For the first time since they'd been six-month-olds, they fell asleep the wrong way around, South holding North.

The South woke up quietly about an hour after he'd fallen asleep. He almost couldn't believe that the North would think that he'd just leave him like that, and with such careless coldness as that.

He'd warmed the North's evening milk with chamomile, so he'd be sleeping pretty heavily at least until morning, and he'd placed lavender sprigs under the other's pillow, so he wasn't likely to have nightmares that would wake him up and ruin the South's plan.

He roused the white bear and put a finger to its lips to prevent it from talking. "Shh, your voice is loud and it'll wake North. We're going to run away from England and France. Together. I need your help. I can't carry North and the knapsack, so you're going to carry the sack for me." The bear nodded and the North carefully tied it around the bear's back. "Thank you."

The North put on his jacket and a second pair of pants, because even though it was spring, the nights got cold and he'd not be stopping until morning. He frowned and slipped off his jacket. He'd be holding the North, so he might get hot in a jacket, but he didn't want to freeze either. He settled for leaving it on open, and carefully gathered the North in his arms, tugging the blankets around his sleeping form with one arm. He motioned towards the North's white bear and started out into the night.

)()(

It was almost dawn by the time they reached their destination. It was a day's travel from the shore for someone intimately familiar with the land, and no stranger would be able to reach it without three days to spare. They were safe, as long as they kept moving.

"North," the South said softly. "North, wake up."

The North stirred awake, yawning sleepily, and burst into tears as soon as he saw the South. "You're leaving!" He said in between hiccups.

"No I'm not," the South said softly.

"But! You need to! The others, they'll find you, and..." The North paused to smell the air. "The sea... I can't smell it anymore. I can't hear it." He frowned. "We've moved. Did they capture us already?" He asked frantically and started to cry once more.

"No, no. Shh, calm down. I knew I had to leave, you were right. So I did. But I took you with me. Now, it's been two sunrises since I've slept, and I'm exhausted. Carrying you fifty miles is hard work."

"Oh, South," the North cried, and threw his arms around the other.

"Ah, there's time for that later. The sooner I sleep, the better. We have to keep moving, but I have to sleep first. Wake me up when the sun is at its zenith. Then we'll travel until dark and break camp there."

"Oh... All right. What should I do while you're asleep? I don't know what to do with myself without you," the North confessed.

But the South was already asleep.

)()(

They went west. They tiptoed through New France and came dangerously close to what could only be New Spain. They went west, and knew freedom for the last time.

"We'll have to go back eventually," the South said as they stared over the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Of course he would say that, the North thought bitterly. He didn't know the future. He hadn't seen what would become of them. He didn't know that his future would be like what he'd find at the bottom of this canyon if he were to jump. The North considered pushing them both off this edge but took a few steps back before he could get any further with the thought. "Eventually could be a long time," he said after a while.

"What are you afraid of?" He thought he heard the South ask.

_You,_ he wanted to say. "You," he whispered, the word escaping from his lips unbidden.

"Me what?" The South asked, perplexed.

_Must have been an echo..._

)()(

Eventually arrived in 1675 with King Philip's War. The people that had been born in his lands, descendants of England's people – he'd never felt the same sense of belonging to them as he had to the people that had arrived from the east – went to war with his natives, people descendant from the first tribes to have crossed the Bering land bridge, _his_ people. The North felt some of his pain, because they'd once been the same land, before a piece of parchment paper had split them apart, but it was the South that suffered, the South that bled and had fits of sleeplessness and bouts of sickness, the South that was being ripped apart from the inside out.

The South was almost glad for that parchment paper if it meant that the North was sparred this pain, even if it meant that they couldn't hear each other's thoughts anymore or see through each other's eyes or feel each other's lands.

And the North, he resented the parchment paper more than anything else in all the world, because he'd been trying to protect the South from learning the meaning of war for so long that if it was going to come to their shores they may as well learn of it together.

The colonists won, and the South stopped being the South, because the South didn't know war; that was America. The North vowed never to be the North again, because the North didn't have a southern half that knew the meaning of the war; that was Canada.

"You'll always be North to me," America had told him, and the name left such an odd echo in his mind that he was almost glad the South – America, now – could no longer read his thoughts.

"And you'll always be my South," Canada said to America, and Canada could tell America felt the same away as he had a moment ago.

The South had been around forever, but he'd died that sunny April day. The North had been around for far longer than the South's forever, but he'd stopped existing that day too. Now America and Canada had risen to take their place, and an era had ended. Forever was a long time, and the North and the South had been ancient, but Canada and America were ephemeral, fleeting things, here today and gone tomorrow, designed to last a millennium at most.

Such was the way of the New World: _discovered_ long after the first people had lived and had children and died there by the Most Important Place on Earth, Europe, and colonized by people that didn't know how to handle the raw power and ferocity of this New World, so named ages after it had grown old.

* * *

**A/N: Generally, my Hetalia head-cannon is that America loves all of his people, Natives, colonists, and immigrants alike, but that didn't really fit with the story, so I had to kind of say that his loyalties lie more with the Natives than with the British colonists. Try to think of it as this: he resents loyalists to the crown, during this time period and up until the Revolution, but in 1675 Revolution was a century away and most people were loyalists to Britain so he resents most of the non-Native population. **


	7. Chapter 7

)(Chapter VII)(

It was raining. _Wasn't it always_, America thought bitterly. Ever since England had come to his shores, he'd brought his weather with him – his weather and his food and his culture and his clothing and his housing and his weapons and his tea and his taxes and his _wars._

They were fighting again; they were killing again. Britain and France and the whole rest of the world, they'd came and conquered and left with their parchment papers deciding the fates of things that wasn't theirs to determine and dividing lands that weren't theirs to separate. And now they were back with their wars and their killing and this time, it wasn't only them. They'd brought the whole world into this conflict, and they'd brought him into it, and they'd brought Canada into it.

Canada had grown since the last time they'd seen each other, America couldn't help but think, but he'd grown faster. It would have been funny, America thought, if it was anyone else but Canada who glared up and up – nearly two feet divided them now – at him through the pouring rain, riffle held tightly in a white-knuckled grip. If America knew him as well as he thought he did, it wasn't even loaded, but that wasn't the point. It was that the Conquerors of the World across the ocean thought they could draw a few lines on a map and consider a friendship of ten thousand years torn.

America put his hands up in fake surrender; he knew that his northern half hated it when he refused to play along with his frequent jaunts into a dreamy land of fantasy, and this wasn't any different – the gun wasn't loaded and they weren't, couldn't be, at war. "Canada, buddy, you want to think about putting that gun down? You could hurt someone with that, you know."

"No," Canada whined, miserably readjusting his death grip on the riffle. "They... They told me I should kill you," he sniffled.

"You don't have to listen to them, Canada. We could run away again. We could go west, we could-"

"S-shut up! You're making this so _h-hard,_ America," Canada sobbed.

"I'm trying to make it easy for you, buddy. All you have to do is put the gun down," America said slowly.

"I want to, but I can't! They! They told me!" Canada let one hand fall from his riffle to wipe hurriedly at his eyes.

"Hey, Canada," America started, pausing for a long moment. "_North_-"

"Don't call me that," Canada shouted, waving his riffle wildly. "I'll shoot! I swear I will!"

"North, we both know it isn't loa-"

America saw the fire rushing out of the barrel of the riffle in the bullet's wake before he heard the tiny _click_ and deafening boom of a trigger being pulled and a gun being fired. He felt the bullet embed itself in his thigh a moment later and screamed, hands flying down to cover the fresh wound.

He glared up at his twin and the other looked as shocked at he felt. He slowly sank to his knees. "What have they done to you?" He asked, eyes wide with horror.

Canada backed away one small step at a time, same frantic wide-eyed look written across his face. "S-South," he whispered, dropping his riffle and putting his face in his hands.

America thought he heard something like, "I'm sorry," from the other, but when the voice dissolved into saying, "I knew this would happen. I knew they'd do this to us, I knew this would destroy us, I've always known," he realized that it was probably just his imagination. He stood up with a wince; his wound hurt in a way he'd only felt once or twice before, but it didn't matter, not when his stronger half was sobbing because of him. He approached the other carefully, but just as he was about to lay a hand on his shoulder, Canada turned and ran. America let himself sink back to the ground and touched the place where Canada had been standing, marked by muddy footprints quickly filling with rainwater. He picked up the fallen riffle, and stared at it for a minute or two as if it had been the one to take his other half from him, before sighing and wrapping both arms around it. "Oh, _North_," he breathed though the lump in his throat. "North, North, North." He found he couldn't hold back his sobs as he buried his face in the cold steel of the riffle, hands rubbing up and down its wooden length and trying to imagine that it was Canada that he was holding, Canada that he was curled around, Canada that was here with him now instead of the weapon the ones who had torn them apart intended to be the death of him.

America decided that the North he knew would want him to use this very riffle to exact revenge upon England. The North he knew would want to be there, and he would, in spirit if not in body, in America's memory if nowhere else. For America, the Revolution – the Retribution – started that morning and wouldn't end even if all the stars fell down to Earth and took up residence in the sea.

)()(

Same riffle, different war.

It was raining, because wasn't it always? That was what war was, America decided. It was riffles in the rain and the death of love.

England stood across from him, bayonet poised to shoot. He wouldn't do it, America knew; no, that was Canada, at least since the world had been turned upside down. America mimicked his position, fingers twitching on the trigger. He would shoot, if it weren't for Canada. Canada liked Britain, and he could understand, to an extent; Britain wasn't France, he wasn't the one that had turned him against America. He could understand every bit of Canada's fondness for Britain up until his _loyalty._ He'd offered to fight for the both of them, no matter how long it took, no matter if there wasn't anyone left by the time Britain was done with them – the colonists weren't _his,_ no, they were invaders from Britain and it would take him a long time to forgive them for that. _No,_ Canada had told him, just that and nothing more. _No._

"Britain!" He called across the battlefield. "I'm not a child anymore," he shouted. _Thanks to you,_ he thought bitterly. "I'm not your little brother." _And I never was._ "From now on, consider me independent!" _And Canada,_ he wanted to scream, but his voice betrayed him and he was silent.

Suddenly, England was rushing towards him, bayonet raised. America's eyes widened and he held up his riffle in defense. Metal hit wood and the force of the impact tore the riffle from America's hands. _It's over,_ America thought. _It's all over._ England raised his riffle one last time, finger tightening on the trigger...

"I can't."

And in that moment, America understood. _Oh, England, turning Canada against me wasn't the way to make me love you back,_ he thought piteously.

England's riffle fell from his hands and the man himself fell to the floor, head in his hands and body curled into itself at America's feet.

"What happened to you?" He asked. "You used to be so great." _Look at the great and bountiful British Empire now, having divided and conquered one place too many._ _See how the mighty have fallen... At least I got to take you with me._

_How does it feel to lose everything you've ever loved,_ America wanted to ask, but he was silent save for the squish of his boots in the mud as he went to gather his riffle. He spared Britain one last pitying look before following his troops away and out of sight – out of the rain, at least – he trusted England to show himself out.

)()(

England had made him a deal. Stay, and America could have his independence. He couldn't refuse.

"Come with me," America had begged. "I'll fight for the both of us, no matter what."

"No," Canada had said, turning away, silently begging America to forgive him.

"You've changed," America said quietly, laughing. "The North I know..." He trailed off, and for that, Canada was glad. He was tired of hearing about the North that America used to know and maybe America was tired of continuing to invest in the delusion that he still existed.

_I'm staying for you,_ Canada wanted to say. _For your benefit, for your freedom._ They'd never be strong enough to defeat the British Empire alone, even with all the time in the world, even if every colonist gave their life.

But then France joined the war and he'd never felt more betrayed – by America, by Britain, by France, by the whole world. It wouldn't have been too late to ask America if he could join him – it would never be too late, not for them – but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life hearing about the North that America used to know, and he certainly didn't want to watch him destroy himself, watch as the flame that was the United States of America, once ignited, burned so bright and so hot that it burnt itself out and took everything with it. It wasn't too late for him to join the war, but it was too late for everything else.

)()(

_Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States._

America had asked him to join his little experiment in democracy once more, it seemed. This time he didn't beg or plead, didn't even ask him directly – they hadn't seen each other since the war, and they never wrote – but instead he made an open invitation in his document of governance.

Canada's answer was no, just like it always had been, and by the time the Constitution rolled around his name wasn't mentioned even in passing.

Canada couldn't care less.


	8. Chapter 8

)(Chapter VIII)(

They met again in war in 1812.

Canada came to America with a gun, but it was just for show. America had guns, too, one in each hand, and Canada could tell that America thought he hated him. The North had loved the South since the beginning of time, though, and nothing so small as a three-letter word like war could change that.

"I'm done fighting you," Canada said in a small voice.

"You're going to have to speak louder if you expect me to hear you," America said, fury flashing in his eyes.

"I'm done fighting," Canada repeated in the same tiny voice. He threw his gun to America and it landed at the other's feet.

America was silent.

"You know how you used to ask me what war was all the time?" America didn't speak, didn't nod, so Canada continued. "I guess no one ever told you that when a nation goes to war against himself... They start again. As new people, or just about. You lose your memory, when you go to war against yourself." Canada sighed. "You lose everything," he added in voice even lower that it had been before.

America let his hands drop to his sides. "Yeah? So?"

"Apparently it's a bit different for two nations who used to be the same. Takes two wars, apparently."

America took a step forward. "So, we're both going to... What, forget everything?"

Canada glared at America. "Not you. You didn't start this war. Me. Just thought I'd let you know. Call you South one last time, too, or a last few times. T-that is, if you want. I mean-" America silenced him with a finger pressed gently against his lips. "That's ridiculous and you know it. Who told you this, because they obviously don't know what war is anymore than you do."

"No one told me. You just... Know. You'll understand one day."

America scoffed. "This isn't happening."

"I can assure you, though, it is."

"Oh, you sound just like _him._" Just like Britain.

Canada winced.

"How... How long do we have?"

"We? I wasn't aware you were part of this relationship, America," Canada said scathingly before sighing and folding his hands on his lap. "Until the end of the war."

America nodded and kneeled before Canada. "Come west with me again? One last time? Just you and me, North and South? Please?"

"We can't run forever, America."

"No, but whatever time we have... Whether we have ten years, or two months, or whether the war ends tomorrow, I want to spend it with you. I want to spend to rest of your life just how it used to be."

"You're acting like I'm dying," Canada said, carefully picking up each of America's hands and holding them in his own.

America looked away. "Aren't you?"

Canada closed his eyes and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching.

"Shh, now. It'll be fine. The hero's here," America whispered.

"When do we leave?" Canada asked quietly.

America thought for a long moment. Shouting sounded in the distance, and gunfire followed. "Right now."

And so they ran.

)()(

The west wasn't what it used to be. It had lost it magic, somehow, with the knowledge of what lie back in the east. They went up to Alaska on America's insistence – he wanted to find the place where they were human, but it seemed that the oceans has risen up and swallowed it. That place was a few hundred feet under the Bering Strait, and Canada had been right, all those years ago – they'd never be back there, ever.

)()(

The war ended on the eighteenth of February 1815, two years and eight months after it had begun.

Canada died and America mourned his passing quietly – they'd agreed the day before to say their goodbyes, just as they had every day for the past few months. _Just in case_, Canada had insisted. _I want to tell the South that the North loves him one last time, just in case. _Canada's white bear had come back down from the icy arctic islands, complaining about how the world had been a better place when that place that had been an icy tundra instead of a collection of icebergs. He'd said his goodbyes, too – but only last night, as he'd refused to say them beforehand. _Not time,_ he'd insisted. America had been extra thorough that night, too, and they'd stayed awake until the sky was just beginning to bleed with the colors of dawn; perhaps they'd all known their lives were about to change yet again.

Sometimes, though, America wished they'd start changing for the better. It had been a thousand years since things had begun to get worse, and, somehow, they'd never gotten even a tiny bit better.

America knew something was wrong that morning when he heard the white bear ask, "Who are you?"

He hadn't heard him say those three words for thousands of years, not since the day they'd met. The North was dead, and the bear had been the first to know. America felt a bit jealous for a moment, and then a bit melancholy, and then entirely like a piece of himself had died.

"That's a good question," he heard Canada asking as he climbed out of the tent. "Who am I and who are you?" He asked.

America smiled his 'hero-grin,' he didn't normally use it on Canada – it was fake and Canada knew him better than that – but this time was different and Canada had never met him in his life. "You love me, and I love you back," he said simply, moving to sit down beside Canada and gathering the white bear into his lap. The poor creature was still blinking confusedly, so America took Canada's hand and placed it on the bear's head. "You're Canada, I'm America, and this is our pet polar bear."

Canada nodded dazedly. "Okay," he said simply. "You're Canada, I'm America, and I hate you."

"No," America laughed. "I'm America, you're Canada, and you love me."

"That's almost what I said," Canada whined, pouting. "I'm Canada, you're America, I love you."

"Pretty much, yeah," America said, handing the white bear to Canada. "Why don't you name him? He's gone a couple of thousand years without one, so I think it's time."

"Do you have a name?" Canada asked the bear softly.

"Who are you?" The bear asked.

"I'm Canada, apparently," Canada said.

"Who?"

"Canada!"

The bear frowned. "I don't know any Canada's," he said tersely, and then wandered off.

Canada huffed and walked up to where America was starting to cook their breakfast.

"He was never like that before."

"Before what?" Canada asked, blinking.

America stared at him for a long moment before deciding that this stranger wasn't so bad. He was quiet, yes, but he could be loud enough for the both of them. His North had been the stronger one of the two, and this Canada was shy and timid and fragile. That was all right too, because he could be – he was – strong enough for the both of them. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all."

The North had always liked to talk about the future. America wondered why he'd never spoken of this, and just how many secrets he'd taken with him. America shivered and Canada put a hesitant arm around his shoulders. America laughed if only so he wouldn't cry. What was he without a North, after all?

* * *

**A/N: This story was actually originally intended to be a Civil War USUK fic. That worked out well! /not**


	9. Chapter 9

)(Chapter IX)(

By the spring of 1861, they were living in a house on the border – they had a border now; that was new.

"My country is going to war," America explained to Canada as a father would to his son.

"What is war?" Canada asked, innocent eyes peering up at America.

America looked away quickly so Canada wouldn't see the tears in his eyes. "I'm not quite sure," he lied.

)()(

"My real name is South," America told Canada on the first day of May. It was 1865, and the war was coming to an end. "And your real name is North."

"I thought you said it was Canada?"

"Who are you?" Asked Canada's bear in a manner he hoped was helpful.

"I don't even know anymore," Canada said, rising and glaring at America in the way he used to when they were young and free and didn't know the meaning of war.

"Don't you?" America called out after him.

"Who was that?" The bear asked in his owner's absence.

"No one we know," America assured it.

)()(

America awoke a different man on the 9th of May.

"Uh, excuse me, do you know who I am?" He asked a blonde-haired man holding what looked like a bear.

"You're the South, and I'm the North, and we love each other very much."

)()(

Canada became independent on the 1st of July in the year 1867, but neither he nor America could remember why that was important. The white bear still couldn't remember who they were, but, to be fair, neither did they.

1900 came and 1900 went, and the Great War arrived soon after. Canada joined Britain almost as soon as the war began because of a thing called loyalty neither of them completely understood the meaning of, and America was eventually forced to join as well. The war ended, and World War Two followed soon after in the greatest irony quite possibly ever; the War to End All Wars had spawned a child, deadlier and more global than itself. Much the same thing happened as last time; Canada jumped to Britain's aid and America declared his pointless neutrality until it came to pass that he needed to take up arms as well.

The Cold War began, and America finally became acquainted with the land in the east his people had first come from all those years ago. He didn't want to fight for some reason he couldn't quite remember, but for reasons he didn't quite understand – the word war arose quite often – he needed to keep building weapons and rocket ships to put an American flag on the moon.

Mr. Gorbachev tore down his wall and the Soviet Union came tumbling after. The year 2000 came and the world didn't end.

A hundred years passed and America went to war with the world. Canada was neutral – anyone touch him, America had warned, and I will bomb you to hell and back. America fell and Canada rose in his place. The world ended for real this time, and a long time passed before anything happened. Canada and America – North and South, they'd started calling themselves again – had assumed, correctly, of course, that they were the last ones on Earth left alive.

The world shifted itself and North was South and South was North and for the first time in a million years, things got better.

They forgot what war was – not that they'd ever truly known, in this life – and eventually their bodies decayed in the normal way, through the progressive stages of aging, just like America had always wanted in another life, back before he was America. They existed in the way they always had, as entities of thought aware of only themselves and each other. Life arose once more, and they were born into bodies and they travelled in all four directions of the compass, and life withered and died and the cycle was repeated.

Earth died, and forever came to an end, but North and South lived on as they always had, as creatures of existence. Neither remembered what it had been like to live any differently, because on the scale of infinity a million years passes in no time at all, but both remembered a time when one of them had wanted a normal human life. Which one, they couldn't tell, because they'd been variations of a common theme for so long, and what humans were, they weren't quite sure. Forever was a long time, they agreed. They'd never wanted forever, not back in the days before words and knowledge, not when they were human, and certainly not now. That was war, they decided. War was forever, and forever was war.

They lost their minds slowly – forever was a long time, after all – until all that was left was a vague concept of North and South and war.

War was insanity, they decided.

)()(

"You're war," the South told the North without words.

"You're war," the North said in return.

War was war, they agreed. War was war, and they were creatures born of war – of war and insanity and forever. War was war – war was everything.

)()(

America had been around forever. He hadn't had a name, when he began, or words to express his state of being, only a basic knowledge of his existence, of the land and the creatures living on it – not human, not yet; they'd come later. He'd known of a place North, even though he didn't have words for North, because some of his creatures had been there and because some of the creatures from the North had come to him.

America had been around forever, but when it came time for him to die, he didn't know that. He didn't know of America or Earth or the North, only of the meanings behind a word he'd spent the better part of eternity wondering about.

)()(

Canada had been around forever – long before America, long before anyone, perhaps.

Canada had been around forever, but when it came time for him to die, he didn't know that. He didn't know of Canada or Earth or the South, only of the meanings behind a word he'd spent the better part of eternity trying to forget.

)()(

War.

* * *

**So... End notes. Uh, this chapter was really hard to write and I'm really not sure if I liked the way it turned out... So, I hoped you liked this story better than I did! Thank you for reading, and that's all~ **


End file.
